Illja isn’t out to remold the past, he wants to plug it into an amp and let it scream. And with its newly released rock/punk single "Stay," Illja issues a scathingly direct track turning around one simple, painful fact: The childhood sweetheart didn’t leave with him. She stayed. With her husband.
At heart, “Stay” is a movie about that moment we all never quite grow out of, when the person who shaped our earliest concept of love leads a different life. Illja doesn’t gussy that feeling up or tamper it down. Instead, he lets the tension ride, intertwining emotional realism with a rock/punk grit and urgency. The result is a song that sounds intimate and yet somehow universally familiar.
The song has bite to it, but also some self-conscious humor and self-awareness that keeps it human. Illja doesn’t pose as a tragic hero. He makes no qualms about his ambitions, listing them matter-of-factly festooning a wink: he wants to be rich and famous and have a helicopter, of course. That one line pretty much summarizes both song and singer: it’s straightforward, a bit cracked, and refreshing in its self-consciousness.
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